"No; your mother's," he said finally.
"But he was the great trader who conducted the contraband trade with Canada!" I cried. "I have heard of him. 'Twas he established the Doom Trail to enable him to supply the French fur-traders with goods to wean the far savages from us! You have told me of him yourself, as hath Master Colden. 'Twas he whom you and Corlaer and the Iroquois fought when you broke down the barriers of the Doom Trail and won back the fur-trade for our people. Why, 'twas then you—you——"
I knew the deep feeling my father still had for my long-dead mother, and I scrupled to stir his memories. He himself took the words from my lips.
"Yes, 'twas then I came to love your mother. She—she was not such as you would expect to find allied by any ties with so great a scoundrel. But she was his niece—past doubt, Robert. She was a Kerr of Fernieside; her mother had been Murray's sister. Kerr and Murray were out together in the '15; Kerr fell at Sheriffmuir. His widow died not long afterward, and Murray took poor waif Marjory.
"He did well by her—there's no denying that. But he always intended to use her to further his own designs. He had a cold eye for the future, with no thought except of his own advantage, and if I— But there's no need to go into that. You know, Robert, how Corlaer and the Seneca chief, Tawannears—he who is now the Guardian of the Western Door of the Long House—and I were able to smash the vast power Murray had built up on the frontier.
"We smashed him so utterly, discrediting him too withal, that he was obliged to flee the province; and even his friends, the French, would have none of him—at least, aboveboard. I have always fancied he still served their interests at large; for he is at bottom a most fanatical Jacobite, and eke sincere in a queer, twisted way. Aye, there is that about him which is difficult to understand, Robert. Himself, he hath no hesitation in believing he serves high purposes of state in all he does."
"But a pirate!" I exclaimed.
"Oh, that is nothing to him!"
"Not'ing," agreed Peter. "He was a pirate on der landt."
"Only a madman could lay claim to serving the State as a pirate," I objected.